VULNERABILITY ------------- In curl's implementation of the Kerberos authentication mechanism, the function `read_data()` in security.c is used to fill the necessary krb5 structures. When reading one of the length fields from the socket, it fails to ensure that the length parameter passed to realloc() is not set to 0. This would lead to realloc() getting called with a zero size and when doing so realloc() returns NULL *and* frees the memory - in contrary to normal realloc() fails where it only returns NULL - causing libcurl to free the memory *again* in the error path. This flaw could be triggered by a malicious or just otherwise ill-behaving server. We are not aware of any exploit of this flaw. INFO ---- The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned the name CVE-2016-XXXX to this issue. AFFECTED VERSIONS ----------------- This flaw exists in the following curl versions - Affected versions: curl 7.3 to and including 7.50.3 - Not affected versions: curl < 7.3 and curl >= 7.51.0 libcurl is used by many applications, but not always advertised as such! THE SOLUTION ------------ In version 7.51.0, the function reading data will consider reading a zero size to be an error and bail out. A [patch for CVE-2016-XXXX](https://curl.haxx.se/s3c/E.patch) is available. RECOMMENDATIONS --------------- We suggest you take one of the following actions immediately, in order of preference: A - Upgrade curl and libcurl to version 7.51.0 B - Apply the patch to your version and rebuild C - Do not use KRB5
